Photography after Photography: Gender, Genre, History
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is Professor Emerita of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books, including Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices; Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation; Rosemary Laing; Chair à canons: Photographie, discours, féminisme; and coauthor of Birgit Jürgenssen.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor of Art History at York University.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is Professor Emerita of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books, including Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices; Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation; Rosemary Laing; Chair à canons: Photographie, discours, féminisme; and coauthor of Birgit Jürgenssen.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor of Art History at York University.
Written on the Body (1997)
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Published:April 2017
This essay interrogates the role of beauty in the visual field. Solomon-Godeau begins with a consideration of beauty as employed in art criticism, psychoanalysis, and photography. Using nineteenth-century nude photographs made by the Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden and his cousin Wilhelm Pluschow as examples, Solomon-Godeau investigates how the depiction of bodies “require coding and inscription in ways that signal not just the difference between various representations of the human body but difference itself and its inherent erotic significance.” As Solomon-Godeau argues, the circuits of desire are shaped not just by aesthetic contemplation and individual sexual desire, but by wider systems...
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